Even Hope
by altairattorney
Summary: [She has hands that must bless and relieve, she has restrained power, and she wishes it could compare with the fury blazing underneath her skin]


**Even Hope**

_Et le mal  
Brȗle dans mon ȃme  
Brȗle dans mon coeur  
Sans aucune flamme_  
Cécile Corbel - _Garden District  
_

The havoc has long been washed away when she arises, enslaved and reformed, as a beacon of hope.

When she shows herself in public, months away from the terrible night, it takes Columbia nothing to turn to her youthful beauty. The crowds sing and pray, spreading in wings to let her pass — she is their leader now, prisoner and queen of their misery.

The cloth leaves no space to her penitent flesh. It constantly presses against her scars, hiding them, reviving them — and she traces the simple embroiders as the grains of a rosary, with all her care and will to break free. Over and over again, she counts the years of her unwanted reign.

Obsessive, latent, her thirst for vengeance entwines with her longing. When the townspeople come to her for comfort, she secretly nourishes both with their tears — for she yearns to be repaid, needs to escape, and yet knows nothing will ever be enough for either.

It is disarming, seeing how desperately they depend on her. They kneel under the weight of what they call their sins; their cupped hands offer waterfalls of words, of prayers, begging for a shard of relief. For them, she is always ready. She shows herself radiant and unreadable, with the detached mercy of a saint.

Their fingers only ever learnt how to pray. She has hands that must bless and relieve, she has restrained power, and she wishes it could compare with the fury blazing underneath her skin.

It is the one part of herself she hasn't lost; that fragment, in spite of all they did to her, she managed to keep close. Fury is the greatest lesson, and the sweetest of her tumors — it doesn't fit on an elegant dress, nor in the soft skin of a shepherd's hands.

To them she shows brooches, veils and the light of her eyes. The last part of her, the last hope, she keeps to herself. 

* * *

Whole years turn to ash, burned by a hunger she has never known. Even her choice, her broken wish, was weaker than this — but she has learnt, from the marks on her body, how no force in the world can rival that of the passing days.

Lingering in its flow is enough to understand; time does much more than just wash away. It tears through the illusions first, breaking and splitting and consuming, until the last drop of blood is gone — and then, when nothing is left but the few things that stay, it shapes them in the most melancholic of ways. Regret and happiness are what it sculpts on; its fingers warp their surface, slow and patient, to the very last fold.

No fragment of past is saved from its touch. Time leaves but two colours to look through — when it is not passion, it becomes anger.

She makes plans on those days. The flock of believers watches her papers shimmer in the afternoon light — their awe matches the predictions, making the long ribbons of ink come true.

She is the embodiment of a faith that knows no forgiveness. She is fiery light and shadow, she is heels clicking on the cold ground, and her smile — it has a feral charm, of ivory teeth and bare distruction.

She doesn't just make plans; she enjoys it. She can almost trace the pattern of Providence with her fingers, raised against the dusty stained windows. She was always bound to destroy, no matter how she was led to it — there could be no other end to this merciless world.

She was betrayed. In many ways, she betrayed herself — she was deceived by what she loved the most, and let it fade, knowing no resistance. She let them take it from her.

They have turned her into a monster, and God, _how_ she loves the sound of that. 

* * *

The day she lets her fire swallow the world is the day she eventually understands.

It has been too long to truly focus on it — all she knows is that, within some of the past molten years, the point of no return passed by.

And she withered inside, with every vein of she had left. That split second alone felt like death; she could feel nothing more, a moment later. She let herself fall to pieces — all but the bad memories, and the slow walk of regret — until now, until the planned end, with her soul and her weapons raining on a corrupted mankind.

Fire has the most vital way of destroying things — so distant from the wind that, now, sweeps her mute soul. Yet, the grim battle trapped in her eyes becomes no different from what she feels right after. It is there, at the end of the world, that she remembers the tempest inside her.

He walks through the tear with the eyes of a man who has lost himself too much. He grabs her hand, as the one explanation he can hold on to. And she tries to explain, worn words from a worn mouth, but there is no point in trying — there is no further sense to what she has become, no addition, except for what they see.

The path he treads on still has a way back. It is not for herself that, under the purifying rain, she remembers — it is for him, and for her first.

Dots of time show, connected by the words she is tracing. She is nineteen again, in the warmth of his hand. She is dancing by a shade of azure she has never been able to let go of. She sits in a golden room, wrapped by the smell of aging paper. She twirls and runs and calls out to him, with a voice ringing clear as morning dew. She is lost — and yet, she can still be saved.

She sends him away with a piece of paper; in secret, she adds another gift. It is something that, by now, no longer fits in this burning Sodom. It is someone else's — with all the strength she has left, she prays for it to be.

If no longer hers, she can still send hope to a million more worlds.


End file.
